


Cyclonite

by Ori_Cat



Series: Napalm Sticks to Kids [1]
Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Biblical References, Canonical Self-Harm, Cults, Gen, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, RFID, Reposted following reviewal, Twenty Minutes into the Future, pretty sure I'm on some kind of watchlist for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:29:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: I wondered what CoAD would look like in a modern day AU… yep, it’s still pretty dark.So this is Hati and Narrander, ex-terrorists for all of a day.





	Cyclonite

Hati leaned back into the side of the truck, causing a dull thunk when his skull hit the sheet metal. “I am not drunk enough for this.” 

“Good.” At his look, Narrander explained, “Alcohol’s a blood thinner.” 

“That’s seriously what you’re thinking about right now?” It came out much crueller than he’d wanted, and immediately he wanted to bite back on the words, blame the exhaustion and desperation and flat-out terror (when was the last time they hadn’t been terrified? It couldn’t have been that recent, if he couldn’t remember it.) 

But then again, he’d always been cruel. Always been angry at someone, something, even if who it was changed over the years. That was how - 

Well. Suffice to say he’d been angry enough at the world, not all that long ago, to think that he could change it. Suffice to say that had been a very dangerous thought, then. 

If he had been a character in a book, now would be around the time he’d wondering how he got here. What long string of mistakes had led to him sitting shirtless in the dust here at the side of the road with almost nothing to his name, watching his friend rub one of those alcohol swab things over the palm-sized blade of his utility knife. 

But because he wasn’t a book character - and more than that, because he already knew and could enumerate every single one of those mistakes in detail, _with_ illustrations - he didn’t. He squeezed his eyes shut, colours blooming like cactus flowers in the dark inside his head. Yellow, orange, red. All the shades of cyclonite. He’d looked back, of course, even knowing he shouldn’t’ve, and it seemed his retinas still hadn’t forgiven him. 

He should have crumbled into salt, like Lot’s wife. That would have been no more than he deserved. 

“Hati?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Are you all right?” 

_Of course not,_ he wanted to snarl. Categorically, _all right_ applied to housewives and doctors and people who went home every night and kissed their children and slept sound and lived ordinary, _unafraid_ lives, and it most certainly did not apply to the two of them, traitors and destroyers and - 

“Hati.” 

“Yeah.” He peeled his eyes open to find Narrander now crouched by his right side, knife and forceps held loosely in his left hand, and still with that damn - frustrating - bloody look of calm on his face. 

“How are you not panicking right now?” 

“That’s half of EMT training right there: how to not panic,” he replied, feeling along Hati’s bicep for that lump, that one rice grain that still bound him, still meant that someone could know where and who he was, meant They could find him. “Or at least, how to panic later.” And They would cover their tracks, they would, drag him back in or drag him six feet down or both. 

Lots of people had chips, really, to mark their locations, identities - normal, _all right_ people usually got them in the hands - to serve as important documentation. And They had looked at that and thought what a great idea, to always know where Their people were, to keep them close, and safely under Their wings. 

(Technology companies, it turned out, were not discriminating vendors. Military? Zoological society? Business, private customer, terrorist? Didn’t matter: if you had money, you could get the tech.) 

What disgusted him most was that he’d ever agreed. 

(On the - well, not the plus side, possibly the not-quite-so-minus side, munitions companies didn’t discriminate either. Hence the cyclonite.) 

“Ready?” Narrander asked, and he managed to nod. “Three two one -“ 

It was exactly as bad as he had expected it to be. He definitely said some things he wouldn’t have wanted to repeat in civilized company. 

“Hold that,” Narrander said, shoving a lump of gauze onto his arm and fumbling for the tape, and Hati didn’t need to be told twice. “I’m sorry,” he said while he finished taping him up, and he felt even guiltier at that, it was his fault in the first place - 

He held his hand out for the knife, but Narrander shook his head. “I can do it. I wouldn’t ask you-“ 

“But-“ 

“Hati,” he said, for the third time, and now the calm cracked, fell away like peeling paint, “You didn’t sleep any more than me, and you drove, and honestly you look pretty bad. I will be fine. If not, I’ll call you back, all right?” 

He wanted to argue, but all the words choked somewhere behind his sternum and now Narrander looked so damn brittle, like just a flick could crumble him into a pile of sand, and he snatched up his shirt and got up wordlessly, clambered into the truck bed to kick his sleeping bag out on the metal. He slumped down on top. 

What now? Contact his wife, get some money, find somewhere to go. Somewhere nobody would recognize him and They wouldn’t think of. Rebuild. Try. 

If, you know, the universe was kind. And it so rarely was.


End file.
